Fieldwork

11 Key excerpts on "Fieldwork"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Key Methods in Geography

  • Nicholas Clifford, Meghan Cope, Thomas Gillespie, Nicholas Clifford, Meghan Cope, Thomas Gillespie(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Ask any professional physical geographer what their favourite aspect of their job is and most individuals will reply without hesitation: Fieldwork. Eagerly anticipated and actively enjoyed, Fieldwork in physical geography is integral to how scientists learn about and understand the Earth. Fieldwork, by definition, takes place outside the classroom, laboratory or office in the dynamical setting of nature. While it includes making direct observations, taking measurements and samples, and recording data about the physical world, these physical acts are only part of a larger on-going cognitive process of the field researcher. It is in the field that the student and professional alike come face to face with the complexities and uncertainties of Earth’s systems and processes. The researcher must make the mental leap from abstract concepts and theories to the real world by employing multiple problem-solving skills such as observation, reasoning, synthesis and evaluation to the problem at hand. It is through the act of doing Fieldwork that new knowledge is developed and old knowledge is tested, refined and occasionally rejected following direct observation of and experiential contact with the Earth.

  Given this greater context, Fieldwork, on the practical side, is the result of long hours of planning and preparation guided by multiple considerations including the research question asked, appropriate methods and the researcher’s interest. The primary research question shapes and drives the Fieldwork and research project as a whole. There are an unlimited number of questions within each sub-field of physical geography that may arise from theoretically driven reasoning or from more inductive thought processes. There are also an infinite number of methods that may be employed in field research. Some are closely linked to a particular sub-discipline in physical geography while others can be used to ask questions across multiple sub-fields. For example, dendrochronological methods are used to answer questions relevant to biogeography, geomorphology and climatology (see Chapter 23

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning across Disciplines

  Comparative Theory and Practice in Schools

  • Gillian Kidman, Niranjan Casinader(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Pivot

    (Publisher)

  Intrinsically, this form of Fieldwork is based on the active ‘cultivation’ of the landscape, being studied through the data collected by the ‘gatherers’, who migrate in waves back and forth across it, intensifying the detail of their knowledge of that location as they do so. In contrast, Fieldwork as a military phenomenon is more concerned with the systematic, precise and measured study of a particular site, in which the gathering of information is controlled and managed at every stage. The ultimate goal of the Fieldwork, regardless of its form, is the ‘…intimate and often unpredictable interaction with specific geographical localities with specific characteristics that influence, shape and to some degree even constitute results’ (Nielsen et al. 2012, p. 12). More specifically, Fieldwork is a personalised, active undertaking, characterised by the emphasis on the closeness of the human interaction with the envi- ronment in focus. In the school context, this notion of interaction or a personalised response to the world is reflected in the notion of Field Learning Environments (FLEs), as opposed to Classroom Learning Environments (CLEs), where the interaction between the outside world is created by the teacher (see Chap. 2). 130 G. KIDMAN AND N. CASINADER The reality that different intellectual disciplines perceive the world through their own lenses makes it axiomatic that the concept of Fieldwork would vary from one discipline to another. Concomitantly, it follows that any full or comprehensive knowledge of any particular site under field investigation can only be gained through the plurality of disciplinary per- spectives that are applied to its study. It is both the multiplicity of these interpretations, in combination with the personal investment of the field researcher(s) in the object or region of study—a personalised form of inquiry—that stands in great contrast to the sterility and formality of lab- oratory work as a form of inquiry (Kuklick 2011, p. 14).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Teaching Secondary Geography

  • Malcolm McInerney, Susan Caldis, Stephen Cranby, John Butler, Alaric Maude, Susanne Jones, Michael Patrick Law, Rebecca Nicholas(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  In a somewhat prescient view, Haggett (1995, p. 31) notes that ‘the choice is not between the traveller-explorer of an early century and a computer-tied geographer of the late twentieth century, but rather how we are to bridge the gap between local field observation and scientific generalisations that hold over a wider spatial domain’. Here he provides a portent of the potential quandary between on-the-ground Fieldwork and the availability of satellite imagery, live cams, smartphones and the all-pervasive internet – the Fieldwork of the future? Centrality of Fieldwork Geography teachers have a collective understanding of and consensus about what Fieldwork is and its role within their geography teaching. In its simplest form, Fieldwork helps to make sense of what students learn in the classroom, but it is much more than that. Teachers unanimously affirm its central role in providing an extension to classroom learning by involving students in active data collection in the field. The data collected are brought back to the classroom for further processing, analysis, evaluation and synthesis, building upon students’ earlier classroom experience. This emphasises the opportunity provided by Fieldwork to reinforce students’ classroom learning through practical application of theory, inquiry-based learning and experiential learning (Cranby 2002). Practising teachers note that some of the greatest discussions, as well as subsequent learning exhibited by students, take place while in the field. However, these do not just occur in the field. As Huckle (1983, p. 62) observes, ‘Such discussions in the field lead to similar debates in the classroom’. These occur through the process of data analysis and presentation, evaluation and synthesis, as students review and assess their Fieldwork results.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The SAGE Handbook of Fieldwork

  • Dick Hobbs, Richard Wright, Dick Hobbs, Richard Wright(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  WHAT IS Fieldwork? In the research community generally, Fieldwork refers to primary research that transpires ‘in the field’ – that is, outside the controlled settings of the library or labora-tory. The importance of field studies in a wide range of disciplines, like geology or botany or the social sciences, is quite evident. Of course, the methods of field research (McCall, 1978) frequently do, and should, include ‘field experiments’. Does applying fer-tilizer to a prairie increase the number of insects? Does street lighting reduce crime? Yet, in virtually every discipline, field meth-ods lean very heavily toward the non-experi-mental – toward observational studies, in the statistical sense of that phrase. Much of that work employs ‘systematic field observation’ (McCall, 1984); for example, the number of plant species occurring in a square meter may be empirically ascertained, as might the fre-quency of expressions of disagreement within a troubled marital pair. Many other field stud-ies employ a more naturalistic, more open-ended style of observation that emphasizes discovery or pattern recognition; for instance, a field botanist might come to see that her observations can be usefully summarized by the concept of brousse tigrée .A second meaning of ‘Fieldwork’, then, has reference to the period of preliminary work and/or of data collection that does take place in a field setting, as dis-tinguished from other phases of those same studies (such as design, analysis, write-up) that take place in more conventional and researcher-controlled settings. For instance, an old-fashioned face-to-face survey study would exhibit a period of Fieldwork, and even the decennial census by mailed questionnaire involves a period of Fieldwork in which block maps are constructed and updated. A third and key meaning of ‘Fieldwork’ is peculiar to the social sciences, such as sociol-ogy and anthropology.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Geomorphological Fieldwork

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier

    (Publisher)

  Although not as heated of debates as Bretz, these two local-scale instances are nonetheless important to geomorphological Fieldwork, as rock decay is the beginning to the changing of the Earth – the very crux of geomorphology. Rock decay remains fundamental to geomorphology, landform-process explorations, soil science, and structural geology, even though it may be glossed over in classes and taken for granted as driving processes in landform development and change. Forthright geomorphological Fieldwork remains a necessary component at all scales of the landscape if potential pitfalls and missteps are to be avoided in the discipline (and in science generally).

  2.6. Why not Fieldwork?

  From its inception, Fieldwork has been the lifeblood of geomorphology. The discipline’s very foundations are based on Fieldwork. Early geomorphologists spent copious amounts of their time in the field. More recently, the Forty-Third Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium (2012) was dedicated to Fieldwork. The concepts found in Fieldwork praxis remain inherent in geomorphology (Fig. 2.2 ). If Fieldwork is paramount for the discipline of geomorphology – even part of its epistemology – then, why this book? “Why Fieldwork?”

  Figure 2.2  

  How geomorphology praxis centers on the interactivity and interconnectivity of Fieldwork and observation with/in landscape. This figure is not suggested as being holistic. Statements represent topics outlined in this chapter and are in no particular rank-order. Many more aspects, elements, and topics occur that could be included, and rank-order of them could be argued depending on distinct landscape, Fieldwork, or observation parameters.

  Since its beginnings with casual observations to its more grand and general theories often brought on through imaginations, this chapter illustrates Fieldwork’s importance in geomorphology. Yet there is so much more to it. Fieldwork can increase potential for learning and

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Doing Fieldwork

  • Christopher Pole, Sam Hillyard(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  1 What is Fieldwork? Chapter overview Fieldwork is an intellectually and technically challenging total experience aimed at capturing meaning. Being there first-hand is important. Fieldwork is also curiosity-driven – to gain insight and understanding or verstehen. In this book we are against methodological fundamentalism, but rather advocate an inclusive approach to Fieldwork. This is a book about doing research. Not any research in general, but a specific kind of research which is as much about the role of the researcher as it is about the focus of the research. The intention is to provide an open and frank account of what it is like to do research: where you, the researcher, are the reason(s) why it will succeed or fail; where you are the main influence on what the research will discover and; how it will be received and evaluated by those who read or use its findings. The idea is that by the end of the book you will have a good idea of the ethos surrounding doing Fieldwork – what it’s all about and what knowledge it can yield. This includes what this kind of research entails, but also what it’s like to do it. We will talk about the excitement of research, the challenges and frustrations, the rewards, the tedium and the sheer hard slog that all research projects involve in different proportions, at one time or another. The kind of research this book is about is that which is based on Fieldwork. The idea behind Fieldwork is that it is about getting involved with what and who you are researching. It is about doing research in a practical, applied, ‘hands on’ sense. The essence of it is what Robert Park, when he was director of the Chicago School of Sociology, instructed his Chicago undergraduates to do, ‘go get the seats of your pants dirty in real research’ (Park in Prus 1996: 119). In this sense, Fieldwork is about getting out there, wherever there is, and becoming part of what is going on and what you are researching

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Fieldwork in Tourism

  Methods, Issues and Reflections

  • Michael C. Hall(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  1 Fieldwork in tourism/touring fields Where does tourism end and Fieldwork begin? C. Michael Hall

  Introduction

  Fieldwork is one of the defining approaches of academic research. Whether in the social or natural sciences, to get out of the office, lecture theatre or laboratory and study, ‘the real world’ is a vital component of the generation of knowledge. In the study of tourism too Fieldwork has long been utilised not only to observe tourists and the interactions between tourists and destination communities but also to better understand the social, economic, political and environmental effects of tourism. Yet despite the long tradition of Fieldwork in tourism studies and in cognate disciplines, such as anthropology, ecology, geography and sociology, that also place a high value on Fieldwork, there is surprisingly little reflection on the role of Fieldwork in tourism research (see Bruner [2005] as an exception).

  Of course, studying tourism has often not been held favourably in other fields nor has it often been seen by other disciplines as providing anything unique or having its own body of knowledge (Hall 2005). Indeed, in the experience of the author, travel for tourism research purposes is often seen in disparaging terms by funding bodies and university research bodies as ‘a subsidized holiday’, while in a broader context travel for research is often viewed through an ‘ironic lens’ (Crick 1985). Hence, Mowforth and Munt (1998: 101) refer to ‘academic tourism’, Zeleza and Kalipeni (1999: 3) to ‘academic tourists’, Clifford (1997: 67) to ‘research travelers’, Kotarba (2002; 2005) to ‘ethnographic tourism’ encouraging the researcher to act like a stranger or a tourist in a foreign land and to treat the common as exotic and the taken-for-granted as unusual, while Stein (1998) uses the same phrase with reference to tourists ‘armed with camcorders and a passion for local practices’! Of course, to separate ‘academic travel’ from ‘popular travel’ (Galani-Moutafi 2000) is an important concern for many researchers worried as they may be about being accused by university administrators, politicians, journalists or other academics who seek to purchase equipment (who all clearly never travel for work purposes) of misspending money for leisure purposes rather than serious research or paper presentations. Of course, as a result of processes of globalisation the increasing internationalisation of higher education, institutional collaboration and knowledge transfer does mean that academic work requires greater international travel than it did in the 1970s or 1980s. Clifford (1989: 177) stretches this point even further when he claims that, in order ‘to theorize one leaves home’, although, of course, like any act of travel, theory has to begin and end somewhere. Nevertheless, as Rojek and Urry (1997: 9) note, ‘It is hard to justify just what makes academic travel a special source of academic authority. Where does tourism end and so-called Fieldwork begin?’

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Learning to Teach Geography in the Secondary School

  A Companion to School Experience

  • Mary Biddulph, David Lambert, David Balderstone(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Geographical Fieldwork should not be seen as a ‘one-off’ and an isolated learning experience. It needs to fit coherently within the wider curriculum experience through geography. This further emphasises the importance of careful and thorough planning and preparation. Pupils must be prepared in advance so that the learning gains from the Fieldwork experience are maximised. Careful attention also needs to be given to how these learning gains will be built upon after the Fieldwork in what Holmes and Walker (2006: 224) describe as ‘closing the loop’. Evaluating all aspects of the Fieldwork also makes an important contribution to your own professional development, and to ensuring the success of future Fieldwork.

  This chapter has explored many of the important issues involved in planning high quality, safe, successful and sustainable Fieldwork. To conclude this discussion, we have chosen to draw your attention to David Job’s challenge when thinking about the significant role geographical Fieldwork can play in a young person’s education:

  Engagement in real Fieldwork, particularly of the deeper kind, addresses almost the full range of intelligences and learning styles. To promote and justify real Fieldwork, it needs to be demonstrated that the experiences offered include not only the development of cognitive skills but also the nurturing of aesthetic sensibility, creativity, critique, co-operative endeavour, caring and healing. These attributes, rather than technical and rationalist aptitudes alone, form some of the foundations for the growth of ecologically and emotionally literate citizens.

  (Job, 2002: 144)

  Further reading

  1. Holmes, D. , House, D. , Knight, P. , Morgan, D. , Norman, S. , Oakes, S. , Sutton, R. and Waller, R.
     (2018 )
     Fieldwork at A-level: Your Guide to the Independent Investigation
     . Sheffield : Geographical Association .
     This book provides an accessible overview of the independent investigation process from start to finish. It is written with pupils in mind, but the step-by-step approach will support your own understanding of the processes your pupils need to engage with.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Geography

  • Dydia DeLyser, Steve Herbert, Stuart Aitken, Mike Crang, Linda McDowell, Dydia DeLyser, Steve Herbert, Stuart Aitken, Mike Crang, Linda McDowell(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  The production of knowledge involves diverse material, social, and textual resources brought together in a specific context, by specifically located actors, and for various spoken and unspoken purposes. Contemporary qualitative research in geography has been strengthened by such understandings. Take, for example, the issue of field work. 34 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF QUALITATIVE GEOGRAPHY Felix Driver demonstrates the constant ‘becoming’ of the field through active pro-duction, as well as its connections to bodies and discourses: If we think of geographical knowledge as consti-tuted through a range of embodied practices – traveling, seeing, collecting, recording, mapping, and narrating – the subject of Fieldwork becomes difficult to escape. The field in this sense is not just ‘there’; it is always in the process of being con-structed, through both physical movement – pas-sage through a country – and other sorts of cultural work in other places. It is produced locally by the spatial practices of Fieldwork, and discur-sively through texts and images. (2001: 12–13) Further, David Ley and Allison Mountz (2001) raise vital questions of the ethics of field work, first asking ‘to what extent is interpretation of the “other” an act of social and cultural privilege?’ They press on: ‘This anxiety has raised the question for some researchers whether interpretation of the “Other” is ethically defensible ’ (235, empha-sis added). Ley and Mountz then wonder if representation of the Other is even possible at all ‘when researchers are so thoroughly satu-rated with the ideological baggage of their own cultures?’ (235). Of course, most of Western/Northern geographical knowledge of the past two thousand years has been based on processes of identifying and defin-ing difference through place comparisons, categorizing peoples, and actively construct-ing ‘Others’ in part to define ‘Self’, in favor-able terms to the latter.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  After Ethnos

  • Tobias Rees(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  Normann suggested that geography came in one of three forms: mathematical geography, physical geography, or political geogra-phy. Ethnography he defined as a subclass of political geography. 2 I thus note that the term “ethnography” was originally introduced to refer to a practice — a curiosity — that belongs to the broad field of natural history. The term “Fieldwork” is of much more recent datum. With respect to an-thropology it was first used (in a systematic sense at least) in the early twen-tieth century, in the writings of British social anthropologists — I notably found the term in the writings of Bronisław Malinowski (1884 – 1942) and his students — who sought to methodologically ground ethnography. “Fieldwork” emerged as a qualifier of “ethnography.” What event, though, or what trajectory of events, led Malinowski and his students to argue, with vehemence, that the only proper form of ethnography was Fieldwork? And what did they mean by “ethnography,” what by “Fieldwork”? My research led me to think that the condition of the possibility for the en-counter between ethnography and Fieldwork was prepared gradually, in com-plicated, haphazard, and unintentional ways, in the period between the late 1890s and the early 1920s. There was nothing straightforwardly obvious about this encounter. The concept of Fieldwork-based ethnography wasn’t a future anticipated in the past — a vanishing point that teleologically organized the history of anthropo-logical research and that eventually resulted in a breakthrough to the truth. On the contrary, it was an unanticipated — a sweeping — event, one for which many contemporaries were unprepared, one that radically reconfigured what anthropology in theory and practice was about.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Dance in the Field

  Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography

  • T. Buckland(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  None the less, while aware of the high degree of subjectivity inherent in any attempt to translate an experience into word, sound and image, the researcher aims to draw his or her construct as near to that first-order reality as possible. Paradoxically, then, this subjective activity focuses on the production of 'objective' and 'authentic' documents. Despite numerous theories, prescriptive texts and technical strate- gies which can be found on how to conduct Fieldwork, the fact remains that the very theory and method of ethnography is dependent upon three factors: socio-cultural and political contexts, the stage in a disci- pline's development, and the researcher's own scholarly background, ideology and interests. My field experience has been shaped by working in two quite different scientific and ideological contexts; first, in Romania between 1953 and 1979, and then, in Denmark since 1980. This dual background provides a theoretical and empirical foundation for my concern to integrate ethnochoreological and anthropological/ ethnological perspectives in field research, despite their intrinsic differences. 1 Fieldwork IN ROMANIA: A BRIEF HISTORY Fieldwork is, of course, but one stage in the research endeavour which comprises: transcription, analysis, systematization and interpretation 41 42 Anca Giurchescu of the material; theoretical framing through studies dedicated to par- ticular topics; and, in certain cases, pragmatic activity in the sphere of applied or public folklore. Consequently, Fieldwork activity is organ- ized in accordance with the immediate and final goals of the whole research process. Brailoiu and Approaches to Fieldwork In 1951, when the Dance Department of the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest was founded, the main task was to create dance-oriented theory and methods of research. Within this frame- work, field research became one of the most important scientific activ- ities (Buc§an and Balaci, 1966).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book